Dear Mark and Mark,
Definitely an interesting perspective on the story....my only question: will it scare people or empower them? 
Oddly, I read this email immediately after seeing the following trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPqwlgqO_x0&feature=player_embedded#!   , sent by a Rio friend who knew I had jumped off exactly the same place depicted and landed on the very same beach....albeit with far fewer people on it. I meant to go dancing that night , but had a very swollen knee. (Hey, I was almost 70!) I came close to dragging my co-pilot down on the first attempt, as shown...hmm. Uncanny to see this trailer and then be told immediately after that we already have the wings and are in freefall!
Trying to make sense of this strange juxtaposition....I had the thought expressed in my first sentence before I suddenly made the connection with the trailer.  Was it because of my still unconscious identification with the blue parrot or would it scare anyone?  I leave the rest of you to express opinions.
Of course the positive side of freefall is "we have wings!"   This makes me recall a dream I had years ago (before my flight in Rio) that was VERY powerful...I had fallen off a very high cliff, was in freefall down to the rocks and  sea, balling up in hopes of reducing impact effect, when suddenly I stretched out and spread my arms and soared instead. 
Oprah was very good all last year (have not seen her new shows) at helping people who are literally in employment and financial free fall  see how to go on living, save their marriages and even help others. ..spread their wings.   How are we addressing the reality of the freefall for so many?  Can we see ourselves in freefall and help them, like the blue parrot's buddy, the other blue parrot?
I am so aware that the problem is our ALL of us being in freefall now, AND that those not yet hit dramatically in their personal lives do NOT believe it and don't want to hear it. That is my problem on Mallorca.
Anyway, I am having lunch today with Deepak (Chopra), who has often told the butterfly story from the stage and is speaking to a sold-out audience here tonight, and had planned to ask whether he had paid attention to my update of the story.  I will now have a dialague with him about this butterfly-in-freefall story as well!!!
So the networking goes.....Love, Elisabet.

Nirvana Cable responded:I am howling in delighted laughter!!! The Rio Movie Trailer is an awesome parallel to the analogy we have been using in FOUR YEARS. GO.... complete with hang glider.
Jon Love) has often said it feels like we jumped off the cliff while assembling the hang glider kit or even waiting for someone to hand us one...
Seems Mark B has indeed distinguished something that the movie trailer drives home.
We are not feeling our wings. Nevertheless, we have em.
FOUR YEARS. GO. Flapping 101 starts soon. Stay tuned for announcements.

Nancy Polend chimes in:

Okay, so now I'm picturing Wile E. Coyote with the ACME Hang Glider Kit, complete with "Warning:  Some Assembly Required" sign.  Of course, I'm also picturing the long fall with the little poof when he hits.  Good news is that he's always in the next scene, so apparently is quite resilient.  ;-)

Meanwhile, through all Coyote's antics, Road Runner examines his fingernails and yawns...

So John Renesch comes back:From my newsletter illustrations archive: (picture of Wile E Coyote with his eyes bugging out) 

  YIKES!

 

Gary Horvitz adds:

Mark-- In addition to this being a timely and dead-on rendering of our condition, a personal irony is that only a couple weeks ago I bought the domain chrysalist.org, where I imagined I might practice my new religion, chrysalism.......I haven't set up anything yet, not even email, but I'm tempted.

and then:

Wily Coyote (conventional activism?) and Roadrunner (Business-As-Usual?) do, after all, have some kind of synergy going, don't they? A symbiosis, in fact. Very organic. What happens when Coyote learns how to fly? Maybe he won't need Roadrunner any more.Wow. How does that look?
Gary

Mark B says back:

Chrysalism is something we will transition out of, right?
You gonna be a new charismatic leader for us?
Gary Chrysalist, Superstar,
   who the heck do you think you are?  (rock music rising in background) 

Gary: I think a chrysalist might be an incubator of some kind, right? A facilitator for imaginal cells? Hell, I dunno. Just sounds cool.

Elisabet Sahtouris gets back to us: Hi all of you,
I see that several of you were amused by the trailer, but I was actually hoping for a more serious dialogue as well, since the butterfly story is prominently displayed on my www.sahtouris.com website and I still tell it in public.  I'm actually willing to edit it if there is some kind of consensus among you. 
As I said, I had some concern about disempowering audiences by telling them they were in freefall.  In addition, the butterfly does not break out of the chrysalis until the caterpillar has completely melted down into nutrients that the butterfly has grown on ever since it began dissolving. I point out that the importance of the metaphor is precisely this co-existence of the failing caterpillar and emerging butterfly for the period of time we are now in, rather than complete collapse followed by  the building of the new. As we all see, the collapse is drawn out as more and more fixes are put in place.
One possibility would be to end the story by asking audiences: "How close are we now to complete collapse?  Do we still have time or might we already be in freefall having to spread our wings fast?  All of US would say the latter, but think of our global audience...all the people we want to attract and empower in these four years.
Anyway, I'd like some real opinions here.
Deepak was just on Mallorca, speaking to a sold-out audience of 2,000.  I had a two-hour conversation before his performance and he volunteered to pass on all the Mallorca emails that came out of his request that they write to deepak@wellworld.org   Have to figureout what to do with that group of people!

 

And Gary H has to say back: 

Elisabet,

Thanks for the invitation to think a little more seriously about this topic. In response to your questions, I am reminded of the Hopi Elders message of eight years ago. It was very clear: Where is your garden?, Where is your water? Create your community. If what we see around us is any indication, then alot of people are getting the message, at least subliminally. It's as though everyone is looking for their fellow imaginal cells--and their nutrition-- in the midst of this collapse, but not necessarily knowing what is coming next.

While it's important to identify the collapse, the unravelling going on, there are also the axis forces (corporate/media/political) of the status quo that conspire (structurally at least, not necessarily consciously) to attenuate, deny or resist the process. Can we view this as the context of our nourishment? How can we use it?

There are also those who believe complete collapse is inevitable, the sooner the better, and who make moral arguments for deliberately hastening its arrival, ie the sooner we fall(fail), the sooner we see who (and how we) can fly.

So what can one say? Whether we are in free fall now or not is a matter of one's sense of time. Maybe it's not crucial to decide about that. But I would assume that nearly everyone can and is feeling (on some level) the truth of what's afoot-regardless of its pace. So the questions might be, "What do you see around you that informs your experience of what is happening?" "What are the responses that arise in you?" "Which ones do you choose to nourish?" I, and I imagine lots of others, oscillate between denial and helplessness on one hand, and a sense of creative opportunity on the other. So naturally I am looking for like- mind. But if I'm not twisting the metaphor too far out of shape, the big question might be, "how are we using the collapse as our nourishment? What is it about the collapse that fuels the birth of something different?"

Yours truly in the soup,

Gary

Nirvana carries the serious dialog further:

Elizabet,
Thank you for the clear invitation to grapple with the butterfly analogy. Here is my contribution. I am no evolutionary biologist, so please true up where I am pointing to...:
Humanity in free fall without imaginal cells is totally terrifying and can only lead to certain death.
Global society is clearly in free fall... Business as usual is proving incapable of addressing our new order of challenge. So, we are evolving.
Isn't evolution the natural order? Like law. In our universe? Wouldn't evolution have embedded in it necessary pathways for evolution? Hasn't it always?
I am not terrified by our global challenges. At all. Because I am an imaginal cell. As an imaginal cell, I recognize other imaginal cells. (Mark Dubois calls this my Canary Whisperer ability...) I actually experience that there are enough imaginal cells for the evolution in play. I am not guessing or hoping or wishful thinking. I see/experience/have access to/intuit (or whatever the heck is going on) the enoughness of imaginal cells.
There are enough of these specialized cells that the body (in this case, humanity) has "every organ" it requires to make the evolutionary leap. How could it be otherwise?
Could the evolutionary process NOT contain enough imaginal cells? Not in my universe. Not in my experience. And I'm not guessing here. I have been observing the transformational process since 1977. I sense that by observing the transformational process, I have been observing evolution in play.
I have observed, and my work has been guided by, a "just in time" phenomenon that has been distinguished as the context of sufficiency. No matter the challenge, if I look from sufficiency, there is a solution. The solution rarely, if ever, fits my pictures. Nevertheless, there is a perfectly sufficient solution available to be created, if I am willing to stay looking until I find it.
Jon Love recently said to Mark Dubois, "See Mark, the trick in pulling a rabbit out of the hat is knowing that the rabbit is in there."
Elisabet, you write, "the butterfly does not break out of the chrysalis until the caterpillar has completely melted down into nutrients that the butterfly has grown on ever since it began dissolving."
I don't see that the whole of humanity has completely melted down into nutrients. What I do recognize is that all imaginal cells have been through this liquid process, we have been melted down into nutrients that humanity has been growing on.
As I am actively searching out imaginal cells, I have found that the "kind of organs" humanity needs to accomplish the evolutionary leap already exist. AND WE ARE NOT YET WORKING TOGETHER.
If humanity is going to proceed on its evolutionary path, I see the necessity of imaginal cells coming together and leading humanity from the space of autonomous, coordinated action.
I see, and am working on, creating FOUR YEARS. GO. as the convenor of, microphone for, and space in which imaginal cells will coordinate their actions.
When we imaginal cells of this emergent, global evolutionary leap lead, our leadership--using the ubiquitous, global communication tools that are already present and readily available--will hold humanity through the rest of the liquid state that is necessary for all of humanity to transition to meta butterfly/complete our evolutionary leap.
You ask, "How close are we now to complete collapse?  Do we still have time or might we already be in free fall having to spread our wings fast?  All of US would say the latter, but think of our global audience...all the people we want to attract and empower in these four years."
How fast we imaginal cells spread our wings will actually determine the depths of collapse to which humanity must plummet.
The longer we wait to work together, the harder the fall.
We no longer get to hang out in the known and familiar silos of the enlightened specialties. Together, we are the imaginal cells of humanity's evolutionary leap and the emergence of the meta butterfly. We are the necessary and sufficient interruption to and nourishment beyond business as usual.
What is it going to take for us to come together and work together? The knowing that we can. And the dismantling of any and all stressful thoughts to the contrary.
As soon as we start working together and sharing our clarity with the rest of humanity, the sooner humanity's freak out of the free fall stops.
We imaginal cells for the meta butterfly have already become individual butterflies, or so it seems. Perhaps we really and truly are simply imaginal cells. We are no longer terrified of the liquid state.
Currently, we "personal transformation" movement butterfly, imaginal cell types are indeed being like the hang gliders in the Rio Movie trailer. We individually catch the free fall of individuals learning to fly.
When we become a unified field of evolutionary leap leadership, humanity will feel it, take a deep breath and the whole will follow our lead.
We are in free fall, and we have wings. We are looking for our wings in the individual when our evolutionary wings are are found in the collective.
Thanks for the opportunity of this inquiry.
Love,
Nirvana

And our Biologist, Elisabet has a long thank you:

 Hi John, Gary, Nirvana and Marilyn,  I am so glad I asked for more as your responses are so rich!  Thank you all so much for taking the time for this:

At 05:31 PM 5/25/2010, John Renesch wrote:

Elisabet [my corrected sp. ES], I love the new butterfly story on your website. ....The recent Supreme Court decision about corporations, the partisan gridlock in Washington, Sacramento, London, etc., the ineffectual UN efforts at Copenhagen, the Gulf oil spill response – all of these are glaring examples of institutional ineptitude. What is good about all these dysfunctions is that they are highly visible so more people are seeing the ineptitude improving the climate in which transformation can occur.
Instead of investing our time, money, energy – especially our hopes and dreams – in these inept and impotent structures, I can think of no better use of our imagination than envisioning the butterfly that will emerge.

Thanks John,  we are in compete agreement here.  Still, the new question is whether to add the "we may already be in freefall and must spread our new wings quickly" piece  to the story? 
Gary: Thanks much for your well-reasoned response. I think your last statement is spot on: But if I'm not twisting the metaphor too far out of shape, the big question might be, "how are we using the collapse as our nourishment? What is it about the collapse that fuels the birth of something different?"  Yours truly in the soup,
This is a BIG IMPORTANT QUESTION we must all take very seriously!  For me, an important part of it is the increasing transparency of the caterpillar's dysfunctionality. Seeing that, seeing how the caterpillar has been destructive, people ask: "How can we do things differently and start looking for alternatives."  It wakes up the dormant imaginal cells more and more. Some of us just saw the dysfunctionality earlier when it was better covered up; now we thrill as its exposure and are ready to help strengthen those waking up.
Nirvana: Thanks to you, too, for working this through.  A couple things you say suggests that you haven't quite grasped the biology of the B-story metaphor, which is important for us all to be clear on, so I will quote you in order to clarify.  You say, Humanity in free fall without imaginal cells is totally terrifying and can only lead to certain death.  The butterfly is made entirely of imaginal cells and their progeny, so it would be impossible for the butterfly to fall from the chrysalis w/o them. Then you say, almost correctly: Global society is clearly in free fall  but this is confusing because a) you mean global institutions (banks, corporations, govts, etc., i.e. the caterpillar), not all people, and b) the issue we actually raised raised is whether the butterfly (made of imaginal cells) is in freefall without yet having spread its (our) wings.  
Next, Nirvana, you say: I don't see that the whole of humanity has completely melted down into nutrients. You are confusing the caterpillar (the old economic order) with humanity a second time, so I hope I am being very clear on this now. The metaphor is about the old exploitative greedy institutions that are in meltdown; the butterfly is the new society we are creating/evolving. Much of humanity is neither, though we hope that as many as possible become maginal cells and join us in co-creation. Next you say: What I do recognize is that all imaginal cells have been through this liquid process, we have been melted down into nutrients that humanity has been growing on.  This statement really confuses the metaphor, which only represents the meltdown of the caterpillar, so we had better choose a new metaphor for the tempering process of people who become imaginal cells!
You are spot on, Nirvana, with the following statements: If humanity is going to proceed on its evolutionary path, I see the necessity of imaginal cells coming together and leading humanity from the space of autonomous, coordinated action. I see, and am working on, creating FOUR YEARS. GO. as the convenor of, microphone for, and space in which imaginal cells will coordinate their actions. 
Whoops, now I have to catch you up again:  When we imaginal cells of this emergent, global evolutionary leap lead, our leadership--using the ubiquitous, global communication tools that are already present and readily available--will hold humanity through the rest of the liquid state that is necessary for all of humanity to transition to meta butterfly/complete our evolutionary leap. Please drop the liquid state metaphor that applies only to the caterpillar when talking about humanity, imaginal cellular or not.  I do not believe all humanity will become part of the new society we are calling a butterfly, much less will they form a meta-butterfly.  We will be very successful if we can get small and large parts of humanity living well in butterfly communities or watersheds or nations as they survive the meltdown.  I do not see a global utopia coming out of this.  Let's just envision as much as possible of humanity living with basic needs met by clean, green, living economies.  
(Still Nirvana)  How fast we imaginal cells spread our wings will actually determine the depths of collapse to which humanity must plummet.  YES!  The faster we imaginal cells link up and spread our wings by building those clean, green living economies, the less suffering there will be for the rest of humanity.  Currently, we "personal transformation" movement butterfly, imaginal cell types are indeed being like the hang gliders in the Rio Movie trailer. We individually catch the free fall of individuals learning to fly.  I like that!  Maybe we should adopt that trailer.  While it was an uncanny reminder to me of that actual flight, which I did as a way of gathering courage to jump off into the scary unknown, it clearly has much wider usefulness in our work.
Now, at last, to Marilyn:  It is clear that we as a 4YG community are taking on developing the structures, systems, messages and support mechanisms for the “imaginal cells” and at the same time doing all of these things for a wider audience so that we can increase the number of imaginal cells. . . I believe the tools most people have access to are not sufficiently providing them with the support they need to feel like jumping into the nutritive soup. . .Therefore, it is my hope that generating an experience of sufficiency is one of the major areas of focus for 4YG. ...So I believe that  creating a context of sufficiency that Nirvana speaks of is crucial for our success.  Thank you for this profound insight, Marilyn (and Nirvana). As the imaginal cells trust in the sufficiency of their being and the sufficiency of the whole, we surrender to the next level of co-creation, dancing and flying and playing our way to a new world.
Am happy to hear of this: The newly formed 4YG Sufficiency Team is undertaking the inquiry into how we generate a sense of sufficiency powerful enough to cause the new level of co-creation that is enough to cause the success of Four Years. Go.  We will do whatever is necessary and we will have fun along the way (perhaps we will house the 4YG cheerleaders – can you picture Barak and Oprah leading a 4YG cheer J) 
Yes, I can!  
Thanks again, all of you fellow ICs!!!